I wonder what Alexis is doing tonight . . .

Listening to Camelot and Brighton singing Camelot, which I approve of. Well, I have not been completely and overwhelmingly busy this week. There was the day I spent at Hampton Court Palace. Despite the fact that many many people lived there, it felt like a museum - empty and lifeless. These all seemed like showrooms more than the remnants of a home. It is a lifestyle very far removed from any I know. But I really don't understand much of what I see in museums. It is all very far removed. I went to the Imperial War Museum and even while I was going through the WWI trenches, I knew that I would not have to stay very long. The smell alone was sickening, but I could imagine burrowing into the mud to escape the bombs if they were going off just overhead.

I actually felt a greater connection to my family as I remembered growing up watching documentaries on wars (especially WWII). Within a museum there is always a distance between us as museum-goers and the material on display. I went to the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery today and while looking at the religious paintings from the 1300s I noticed the large difference between our view of religion and their view of religion. They use so much gold and gilding, I imagine their expectation of heaven is dripping in gold. But then I was wondering what we expect from heaven and religion.

The gilded pictures depict a vision of religion that is outside of my religious vision, but won't heaven be outside of all of our experience. This worldly frame of reference that we all have is all we know. Heaven and all the things beyond our mortal existence must be so profoundly different that I think it would be inexpressible with all the gold, shining lights, and art in the world. All this altar art is beautiful and you can see the dedication and belief of the artist in the craftsmanship and beauty but I think it is something beyond expression that the artist is trying to channel into a painting.
But enough profundity. Detroit at the National was a play that I really enjoyed. It may not have been the best play, but I connected to it so much that I was sucked into the experience of this play. It may not have been as good as Antigone, but it spoke volumes to me.

I loved this profound connection to insane humanity. I also saw Jersey Boys and The Duchess of Malfi this week along with spending a few hours at the Science Museum. There was a large section on the history of medicine, and many other things that I don't connect to as much, but find very interesting. In the Portrait Gallery I connected most to the portraits of authors. John Clare, Byron, Burns, Scott, Wollstonecroft, Paine, the Shelly's, Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Jane Austen - these were the pictures I was the most excited to see. These are my people. Not my family, but totes my people.